Boulder based Clementine Art was awarded the Sherbrooke Capital award for Excellence in Innovation at Natural Products Expo West this year. This award is a particularly rewarding one for the Clementine team, as the idea of innovation is at the heart of Clementine’s creative mission: for our products, for children, and for the planet.
To think that a loaded, green paintbrush in the mouth of a toddler started it all. As the owner of Clementine Studio, a local art space for children, I sighed a lot, washed little fingers (and faces) a lot, and wondered why the art product choices for children weren’t better. A lot.
The more I wondered, the more I researched. The more I researched, the more unsettling information was revealed (or sometimes concealed), which, in turn, pushed me to experiment. Armed with a teacher’s recipe for dough, organic flour, and a box full of natural color and scent samples, I started making natural paint and play dough in my kitchen in 2008. The more I experimented, the softer and brighter our natural play dough became. The more natural colorants I tested, the more I learned about p.H and other stability factors. The experience was hardly free from difficulties; an overturned quart of natural cranberry extract on my car floor is a lingering disaster I re-experience daily. Mixing purple play dough to send off to an important buyer, only to notice that it faded to grey overnight was perplexing to my inexperienced mind, and one particular stinky batch of bad paint would have made your head spin.
Our mantra became, If making natural art supplies were easy, someone would have done it a long time ago. As we pushed up against the limits of our incomplete scientific expertise, the Clementine Art team worked with a bevy of natural food scientists, natural ink researchers, biochemists, and other industry experts to refine and perfect our formulas. In August 2009, Clementine introduced the first all natural children’s tempera paint, markers, crayons, crayon rocks, glue and modeling dough.
Innovation can be defined as the creation of something new. For Clementine Art to be recognized for innovation by bringing unique and better products to market is an honor. Even better, is our learning that we have set a high standard for the company we aspire to be. It is our greatest hope that our products will inspire the same innovation and engagement in the creative process for our children.
Clementine is proud to help children develop their creative voices. We believe those voices are the future of innovation; one step closer to solving all the complex problems our world can dish out.
By: Diana Mercer
Article courtesy of LOHAS.com: http://blog.lohas.com/blog/lohas/0/0/clementine-art-honored-for-innovation-v2
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